Thursday, June 10, 2004

Just watched Touching the Void. Good movie. Best line: "Bloody hell, I'm going to die to Boney M!"

When I was a young man -- OK, when I was a younger man -- I recall being greatly surprised at my inability to get certain ditties and tunes out of my head, no matter where I went or how far I traveled. And in my youth -- that is, my early 20s -- I took this as some sort of profound revelation about the human condition.

So it should come as no surprise that the part I liked the most in Touching the Void is when the mountain climber, having been left for dead and having touched the void inside a deep glacial crevasse on a remote Andean peak, and having subsequently penetrated the void and lowered himself from an elevation of just under 20,000 feet, alone, crippled and in excruciating pain due to a shin bone that has shattered his kneecap and telescoped into his thigh bone, after he finally gets to the bottom of the mountain, suffering from dehydration and delirium, miles and miles from base camp, at last convinced -- no, this time really, really certain -- that he's reached the end, suddenly finds himself with "Brown Girl in the Ring" stuck in his head. Can't shake it. And he doesn't even like Boney M.

"She *looks* like a sugar in a plum. Plum, plum!" What does that mean anyway?